Tomorrow and the Days After [Tier 2 & 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

I debated putting off posting this story for a day because I hadn't had a chance to make a cover image yet. But that seems like a silly reason to make you wait. If I make an image in the future, I'll stick it in here. But for now, here's the story...

It was a small small world.

Risa Hunzberger recognized me at the same moment I recognized her. We were hours from the small town that we had both grown up in - the small town I thought I left her behind in.

“Well this is quite the surprise,” she said first. Risa was short for something, but I couldn’t recall what it was anymore.

“If I didn’t know any better,” I said, “I’d think you followed me here.”

“To Connecticut? Bradley, dear, I wouldn’t follow George Clooney to Connecticut if I saw him crossing the state line in just his boxer shorts.”

“So, what brings you here?”

She taps the name tag sticker on her pantsuit’s breast. The New England Farmland Preservation Society Annual Conference 2021 is printed below her handwritten name - the giant ‘R’ looping and curling across the sticker theatrically.

“NEFPSAC,” she said with a shrug. “It’s even less exciting than it sounds.”

“Do you...represent a farm?” I scratched my head. The last time I had seen Risa, she was working as a waitress at a diner. That was 10 years ago, of course.

“Local government,” she said. “I’m on the planning commission. I mostly beg farmers not to sell their land to developers.”

That doesn’t sound too fun to me. “Neat.”

“And you?” she asks. “I doubt you’re here for NEFPSAC.”

I shook my head. “Can’t say I am. Though, now that I’m here, maybe I should sneak in and grab some swag.”

“The only swag you’ll find is post-it notes and pens,” she said, looking disappointed herself. “If it’s good swag you want, you need to be at NYSCAAG.” Mercifully, she quickly rattles off the letters in the acronym without trying to pronounce it like a word.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“No, but really,” she added. “What are you doing here?”

“A concert, actually,” I said. “Well, it was last night. I thought my buddy and I would take an extra day or two after and just hang out in the hotel room and…” I stop myself before I mention drugs or alcohol. “...chill. But he actually had an emergency and had to go back home early. So I guess I’m just...hanging out.”

“Well I do not believe in fate,” Risa said, running her hair through her thick blonde hair, “but you do have to admit that this is pretty wild.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you could say that again.” I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m processing. It is nice to see her, but I also probably could’ve done without the encounter.

“The conference is wrapped up for today,” she said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at the large room behind her where a slow herd of bearded men in flannel shirts and suspenders begin to emerge. “I was going to go get some food. But...maybe you’d like to join me?”

I knew that she was going to ask that. And I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to say no. You don’t run into someone you grew up with in a place like this, years after having seen them last, and just walk away.

“Of course.”

--

When I wasn’t making a conscious effort to forget who she was, I had a complicated relationship with Risa. She was my first crush. She was also my first enemy.

In hindsight, I mostly remembered the bad things. The teasing. The pranks. Seeing her in person again, though, I see what it was I liked about her. She’s beautiful. Whipsmart and charming.

“I don’t drink wine anymore,” she said, sipping from a vodka martini. Extra olives, which grosses me out. “My husband was a wine snob. Like, he literally wanted to become a sommelier.”

I’m not sure which question I want to ask first. “Was?”

“Ah, well, we’re divorced now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I hadn’t even known she was married.

“Don’t be. It all happened so fast. Within two years we met, got married, and then divorced.”

“What happened there?”

“He liked…” she stopped herself. Her tone suggested that she had something especially snarky to say, but she composed herself and started over. “He was gay.”

And then my other question: “A sommelier? Did that pan out?”

“God no. He was too much of a lush to be taken seriously. Don’t get me wrong - he was finding himself, and that’s a hard thing to do sometimes. I’m glad he figured it out. It just sucks that his self-discovery wasted a few of my precious years.”

I nodded, not completely sure what I could say about any of that.

And you?” she asked. “I’m just going to go ahead and take a guess that you’re single.”

“Hey. What makes you say that?”

“No ring on your finger, for one. But if I had to provide further evidence, I’d point out that no woman would date you while your hair looks like that.”

My immediate reaction was to be offended, but she wasn’t completely off base. It had gotten a little long and wild the last few weeks. There was nobody in my life to nag me into getting cut.

“Well I am single. Got out of a long relationship last year, so I’ve just been, kinda, doing my own thing, you know?”

She nodded. “Concerts in Connecticut in the middle of the week? Single male activity.”

I’m tempted to say that we’re dancing around an ancient artifact from our shared past, except that it doesn’t feel like we actually are. Still, just as the memory still lingers in my consciousness, I know it does in hers too. I’m curious if either of us will bring it up.

I smirked. “You really haven’t changed much. You’re still a feisty know-it-all.”

“I’ve never claimed to know everything,” she said, smirking behind her lifted martini glass.

“Maybe you know enough.”

“I know - or I could guess - that you haven’t really needed to grow up much.”

Now it feels like we are deliberately dancing around it.

“I mean that in a good way,” she adds. “I wish I could be a little more...carefree.”

“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” I said.

“Some things never change,” she said with a smug grin and shrug. “You were never the, uh, biggest boy in the room.”

It feels targeted. And baiting. But I’m stupid, and I took the bait.

“You say that like I had a choice.”

She nods confidently, clearly happy that I’ve stumbled into the trap she had laid out for me.

“You had a choice,” she said. “You had every opportunity to say no.”

“That’s not true,” I quickly replied. “I’m pretty sure that I…”

“I’m telling you,” she said. “You never once said no. Because if you had? I would’ve left you alone.”

My cheeks were flushed, and I felt my fingertips tapping nervously on the table. Of all the people I could’ve run into here.

“I wasn’t trying to upset you,” she said, her voice softening a little. She reached across the table and put her hand on mine - stopping my fingers from continuing to bounce. “Maybe we can let bygones be and just...enjoy this little coincidence of running into each other?

I nodded, relieved to hear that - mostly.

We spent 20 minutes talking about home - or her home; what was once my home. The many dogs of Doug Shelton. The weird combination barbershop and bookstore on Maple. The Summer of the Frogs. All of the terrible pizza places.

She sighed, smiling wistfully. Before she even said another word, I knew the topic would be coming back to things I’d rather have avoided.

“Was I mean to you?” she asked.

I could’ve feigned ignorance. Bought myself another minute or two by asking her to elaborate on what she meant. But I knew what she meant, and she already knew that.

“I don’t think you were cruel,” I said. “But you certainly had quite the imagination.”

She laughed. “I was...actually thinking about it the other day.”

“Oh yeah?” Most of my surprise came from the fact that I thought about those days a lot. I just assumed she hadn’t.

“I was trying to remember how it all started. Because we weren’t, like, friends or anything, you know?”

“I was a nerd,” I said with a shrug. “I hung out with the kids who played collectible card games. And you were…”

“Someone who, to this day, doesn’t know what a collectible card game is,” she said with a smile. “But our mothers were friends. And your mother had just gotten a job?”

“Right,” I said. “She was so proud of herself. Getting back in the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom for all those years, you know? She didn’t think she could do it.”

“So she asked my mother if you could spend the days at our house while she worked,” she said, continuing our oral history.

“Which...I wasn’t happy about, I should say.” We both laughed. I continued: “Not only was I not looking forward to spending my summer with you, but your Mom was also running a daycare center, right?”

“Well it wasn’t actually a daycare,” Risa said. “She was watching two or three neighborhood babies at any given time. I’m not sure how my mother became the town nanny, but she never seemed to mind it.”

“Your mother just about forced us to spend time together,” I said.

“Well sure. If she hadn’t, I would’ve spent the summer locked in my bedroom, avoiding you, and you would’ve spent it reading your comic book on our deck.”

“Which, for the record, wouldn’t have been the worst summer.”

“But we had fun, didn’t we? You know, once we started playing games together and stuff.”

“Games? Plural?” I laughed. “We played one game of Mouse Trap. And then you asked me if I wanted to try on a diaper.”

She shrugged. “We had a lot of diapers around the house. Like, they were everywhere. And, I don’t know, you looked curious about them.”

“I never had a younger sibling, so I never really saw them around. They were new to me, I guess, but I don’t know if I was curious about them.”

“Oh, come on now. I walked past the bathroom, and I saw you in there, holding a diaper up to your nose and sniffing at it.”

“It had a scent! I was curious!”

“I didn’t think you were going to take me up on my offer when I asked if you wanted to try one on. I...I was joking.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I realized that later. But, at that moment, I…” There was a lot I wanted to say, but most of it sounded defensive. “I hadn’t spent much time with a girl before. A cute girl, at that. So...if you had asked me to put peanut butter on my head, I probably would’ve done that too.”

“Damn. I wish I knew that then. Is that still true now?”

I shrugged. “Do you have peanut butter on you?”

“Not in this purse, sadly.”

“I guess we’ll never know, then.”

Food had arrived, and we picked at our plates while sharing the occasional shy glance. The tone had shifted a little, getting a little more flirtatious as we stumbled down our awkward Memory Lane together.

“Did you actually fit into a baby diaper?” Risa asked. “I don’t remember.”

“No...but not for a lack of trying. But you...made a diaper.”

“Oh right! I attached two together.”

“There might have been some tape involved.”

“But it worked,” she said. “I do remember that.”

I felt my face getting warm again.

“And then,” she continued, her voice getting quiet again, “you’d wear them whenever I asked you to.”

“Which was often.”

“What can I say? I, uh, liked having that sort of power.”

“Until…”

“My mom found us?”

My face felt like it was on fire. I drank half of my glass of water in three seconds. Sometimes I had fond memories of that summer - but I had always stopped myself from going too deep in that nostalgia. Because it had ended rather badly.

That was where we ended the oral history of that summer. We both knew what happened after that. Her mom had walked in on us in Risa’s bedroom - my pants removed while I wore a frankensteined baby diaper of Risa’s creation. No amount of explaining that we hadn’t actually done anything “sinful” had fallen on deaf ears. There had been no touching. No peeking. No sex. Risa had often joked about “changing” me - but it had never happened. I was just an oversized doll for her amusement that summer. Waddling around her room in a diaper while we played board games and watched VHS tapes. It had been humiliating, but usually only after I had gotten home. When I was there - with her - I liked making her happy.

It was never the same after that. It was the end of our summer together. It had been the end of our mothers’ friendship. We nervously drifted past each other in school hallways and throughout town until I had moved away. Up until now - this very dinner - that had been the end of the story.

“Well,” Risa said, smiling and shrugging away the awkward silence that had developed while we both silently recalled the rest of the story, “it would appear that we both managed to become functioning adults, right? No harm, no foul?”

I raised my beer, and she raised the remnants of her martini again. The glasses clinked together.

“Where do you live now?” she asked. It sounded like a change in subject. Or recon.

“Amberton. It’s up past…”

“I know where it is,” she said. “That’s a bit of a hike.”

“Oh, it’s not far from here,” I said.

“I meant from...me.”

“Do you wish that I lived closer to you?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “Quite the contrary - I’m thankful that you live further away from me. It makes tonight feel a little more...unique, maybe? Like...maybe I can say things that I normally wouldn’t say because I don’t have to worry about seeing your face next week. Or the week after. Or the week after that.”

“Ah, I see,” I said, nodding. “So...what is it, then, that you want to say that you normally wouldn’t want to?”

“Lots of things,” she retorted, a coy smirk drawn on her face.

“But you’re going to keep them to yourself?”

“I bought a pack of adult diapers once,” she said. “I asked my husband - my then-husband - if he’d put one on for me.”

“Did he?”

“He did. It took most of a bottle of cabernet to convince him.”

“Because he’s a sommelier.”

“Don’t get me started on that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He didn’t get it. He didn’t like it. But he did it.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. It was, like, an experiment. I guess. I had this nagging thought in the back of my mind for years about it. Like, I just wanted to see a man in a diaper again. I know - believe me, I know - it sounds ridiculous, but it just hit me in all the right places. Maternal instincts and power trips and whatever else. But he put this diaper on and just stood there and it did absolutely nothing for me. Worse, we had already been drifting apart by this time, though I hadn’t realized it yet. It was nice of him to have indulged me, but it probably exacerbated everything that came after.”

I felt something stir inside me. That nagging in the back of her mind hadn’t just been exclusive to her.

I was tempted to say nothing about this at all and just move on. But she had said it herself - we probably weren’t going to see each other again after tonight. If there was ever a time to say something we wouldn’t normally say, this was it.

“I can relate to that, actually,” I said.

“Oh? Did you put an ex in a diaper too?”

“Well, not that part. But the idea of thinking about them long after you and I stopped spending time together.”

“Them? Do you mean diapers?”

“I mean…”

“You can say the word,” she said. “Go on.”

“Diaper,” I said. I laughed, and she followed. “I still think about them too. The, uh, diapers.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s weird, right? Because I didn’t think I liked it when we were kids. I thought it was weird and...yeah, I guess, at the time, I thought you were mean. But later? Long after that option wasn’t there anymore? That’s when I realized I wanted to do it again.”

“Funny how things work like that,” she said.

“In the spirit of saying things as if we won’t see the other again, I could make another little confession.”

“Speak, my son,” she said in a comically exaggerated gruff male voice.

“Was that…?”

“Father Marone, yeah.” We both laughed again.

Deep breath. Here we go again. “I’ve, uh, experimented too. With diapers.”

Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward across the table. “Did you now?”

“Well, you know, you start living on your own and you have your own money and so you think about all the things you can do now that nobody has to see or judge, right? So, I ate ice cream for breakfast and I went and bought diapers.”

She giggled behind her hands. “What kind did you get?”

“My first diapers - well the first diapers I ever bought for myself - were from the grocery store. I didn’t think I had many options, and I was fine with them for what they were. But then, I went online and…”

“There’s a lot of options, right?” she asked, excitement lighting up her entire face.

“Yeah. And so I had to try those too and…”

“Oh, so you’ve moved well past the “experimenting” stage, then.”

“Risa, if I’m being honest with you, I wear diapers pretty often. Still.”

“And...did you bring them with you? For your little trip here?”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d get a night or two alone but...yeah, of course.”

“I see,” she said, nodding.

“If you want, after dinner, you’re welcome to come up. I could show you?”

She smiled, looking down at her plate of food - poking at the potatoes with her fork. It was hard to determine what was going through her mind.

“We could do that,” she said. “I suppose. And what, exactly, do you think you’d show me?”

“I could show you my diapers,” I said. “They’re big. And thick. They have little horses on them.”

“What color are they?” she asked.

“White, mostly. There’s a colorful strip at the top with the horses on it, though.”

“That’s a good color for a diaper,” she said. “Makes it easy to tell when a baby has had an accident.”

“Y-yeah, that’s true.”

“Do you have accidents, Bradley? In your diapers?”

“That depends, I guess. Uh, no pun intended.”

She laughed - snorted, really.

“It would depend on what you classify as an accident, right?” I continued. “Let’s say that I was wearing a diaper and I wanted to use it. Is that an accident?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, that is not an accident.”

“So, there you go. I don’t have accidents in my diapers.”

“Interesting,” she states. “But, what is interesting, too, is that very few who wear diapers are guilty of having accidents.”

“Hmm?”

“Maybe towards the end, as a little one is being weaned off the diapers and onto the potty, right? But before that - they’re not really accidents. It’s the expectation.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“It just sounds to me like you’re a baby.”

My cheeks warm again, and my foot begins to tap rapidly. “You could make an argument for that.”

“So we could go back up to your room together. You could show me your diapers. I could even put you into one. Would you like that?”

I nodded.

“And then, maybe we’d make up for lost time. Continue from where we left off.”

“Yeah,” I said, still nodding like a bobblehead doll. “Me, crawling around on the floor in my diaper. Or sitting in your lap.”

“And then, what, you’d have an accident? Oh, right, we’re not going to call it that. You’re going to...use your diaper. Just use it. Without even thinking about it. Like a baby, yes? When you have to go, you’re just going to go.”

My breathing had become a little heavier. I felt myself stiffening in my pants.

“And...when I go? When I use my diaper? You would, then, change it. Right?”

“Oh, well obviously,” she said, her middle finger circling the rim of her martini glass slowly. “Can’t have the poor baby lingering too long in their own filth. I mean, sometimes babies are smelly little things. I’d need to make sure there isn’t going to be a rash.”

“You, uh...you think that you’d change me even if I…”

“Made a big dirty mess in the seat of your diaper?” she asked. “Nothing I haven’t seen before when I lived with my mom. It’d be bigger, sure. But nothing I couldn’t handle.”

I took another deep breath as I quickly tried to process everything. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve daydreamed of a day like this, Risa. I try to be a reasonable man; a sensible one. I believed that I wouldn’t run into you again. And that, if I somehow had, we’d avoid a topic like this altogether.”

“What would be the fun in that?”

“I’d really like it if you came up to my room with me. You can diaper me. I’ll use it. I’ll do anything you want. Then, maybe, you could stay the night? I mean - if you wanted to stay in touch after, I drive home every few months to see my folks, so I could always do that a little more frequently and…”

“Let’s slow down a little bit, Baby Boy,” she said. “I’m not sure we’re on the same page. We’re in the same book, for sure. But one of us has read ahead of the other.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I don’t want to have a relationship with you, Bradley. I don’t want to have, uh, relations with you. I have not lusted after you for the last 15 years. I don’t want to be your girlfriend, and I don’t want to be your Mommy.”

I could hear her words, and I had a basic idea of what she was saying, but I hadn’t really absorbed them yet.

“You forgot that I disliked you when we were kids,” Risa continued. “Mind you, I was young and a bit of a brat. I’ll admit that. But I didn’t make you wear a diaper because I wanted to create a weird little game that we’d daydream about years later. I was bored, there were diapers around, and you followed me around like a puppy once my mother told me that I had to spend time with you.

“I didn’t put my ex in a diaper because I thought it’d save our marriage. I wanted to see him humiliated, and that was what I wanted to get off on. That was a failure because he didn’t get it. He thought it was weird, and he was just going through the motions because that’s what he thought I wanted. So, no, if I were to follow you up to your room after dinner, it’s not because I’ve been waiting for 15 years to be your mommy. It’s going to be because I want to see you pee and poop your pants like an infant. And I’d change your diaper like I would for an infant. And then I’d go back to my room, and stick my hand into my panties. And for the rest of my life, I’d have that memory of having that sort of power over you. And I’d touch myself thinking about it every single time. Tomorrow and the days after. And I wouldn’t ever need to see you again.”

We sat in an awkward silence for a few moments. The words were finally permeating my mind, and they burned on impact.

“I guess we’re no longer being polite?” I asked, breaking the silence.

She smiled. “I don’t actually mean to offend. But if we’re going to be honest tonight, I need you to know that I want nothing more from you other than to see you completely humiliated at my hands. And I don’t think that’s what you had in mind when we sat down here.”

I sighed. “You’re right about that. But…”

“But?”

“Is it bad that I still want that?”

She shrugged. “Do you?”

“Fuck me up,” I said with a laugh. “Do your worst. Make me regret asking you to come up to my room with me. Leave behind memories that we’ll both never get sick of thinking of. Leave me wanting more. Like you had 15 years ago.”

“Fine,” she said, grinning. She scooped up some food with her fork and took a bite. I slowly watched her chew and swallow. When she wiped her mouth clean with a napkin, she spoke again: “Go on. Finish your dinner.”

I dug back into my own food again. Dinner would be mostly silent from that point on. We’d even order dessert - further dragging out the wait until whatever would come after.

We both knew it’d be worth the wait.